Kushner's 'Intelligent Homosexual' Finally Debuts

By

On Top Magazine Staff

|
May 15, 2009

It's about “sexuality, and the
housing market, and religion, and Marxism, and stuff like that”
Tony Kushner said about his new play The Intelligent Homosexual's
Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures
that debuts tonight at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

Intelligent Homosexual has been
in development since 2006, when Kushner agreed to pen an exclusive
new play for the regional theater company. Earlier this month,
Guthrie officials delayed the premiere of the play by a week.

Kushner continues to be best remembered
for his 1993 gay-themed Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on
National Themes, a dramatic play of epic proportions where angels
clash with closeted politicians during the opening salvo of the AIDS
pandemic in America.

When asked for comparisons between
Intelligent Homosexual and Angels, Kushner, 52, says
they share some themes.

“All of my plays turn out to be:
Finding the subterranean tunnels that connect everything,” Kushner
says in a video located at the Guthrie website. “Proceeding from
the idea that everything is interconnected. That there really aren't
impermeable boundaries between any phenomenon of existence and any
other phenomenon of existence.”

Set in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens
neighborhood, the play examines the connections between three
Italian-American siblings – two of them gay – and their families.
Some of these connections are preparing to breach as the family
comes together over one long weekend in 2007 to deal with their
suicidal father who appears to have lost his way.

The Guthrie's three-month long “Kushner
Celebration” began in April and features a Kushner musical
(Caroline, or Change), a series of short plays by Kushner, and
speaking engagements with New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich,
gay rights lawyer Kevin M. Cathcart, and even Pulitzer Prize-winning
playwright Tony Kushner.